


There's a Leak in Every Boat

by exeterlinden



Category: Hard Core Logo (1996), Wilby Wonderful (2004)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Timeline, Backstory, Crossover, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-21
Updated: 2008-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-05 13:14:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exeterlinden/pseuds/exeterlinden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'd been on the street for a while before boarding. I have this friend back in Vancouver, Billy. He fucked me over." Joe drinks from the whiskey bottle dangling from his hand, laughs, "He's a fucking drama queen, it happens once in a while - should be alright when I get back into town."</p><p>"Guy sounds like an asshole."</p><p>Joe stills. He takes a deep drag of  the joint, chases it with a swig of whiskey, wipes his mouth against his shoulder  "Yeah, he is. But... but, so am I."</p><p>Walter huffs, one hand reaching for the joint. "I don't think so."</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's a Leak in Every Boat

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set somewhere during the late seventies/early eighties, when the guys are just out of their teens. I've taken great liberties with factual stuff - pretty much all inspiration to this story came from the incredible music video _To the Lighthouse_ by the talented (and slightly bonkers) Icelandic art trio _Ingenfrygt_.
> 
> Many, many thanks to akamine_chan for her wonderful beta work, and for a couple of sentences that work so much better than my original own :)

Joe boards the ship in Vancouver, carrying a plastic bag containing five cartons of cigarettes, one for each week, four one-liter bottles of vodka and the ten grams of weed that he could afford after that. Billy's Zippo in his pocket.

They bunk him in with the only other seasonal worker in a cabin on the bottom deck. No windows, a thick group of pipes hemming in the metal bunk bed riveted to the wall.

"I don't give a fuck. Put me wherever. Got to be better than the street, right?"

The fisherman doesn't answer.

"Fucker." Joe mumbles under his breath as the guy leaves.

He smokes a cigarette, then breaks the seal on the first bottle of vodka. He takes a couple of slugs, and then he falls back on the bottom bunk and crashes out.

When he wakes up there's a gangly guy in the cabin, pulling on one of the orange oilskin suits hanging from hooks on the wall.

"Better get ready," the guy says, "they start pulling in the nets in fifteen minutes."

"Shit. How long have I slept?"  Joe watches the guy do up the last button in his coat, flick a cigarette into his mouth and light it. The guy inhales, cheeks hollowing.

"Half a day, just about. I'm Walt." He stretches out a hand.

Joe ignores it. "Walt, huh?"

Walt takes back his hand, shrugs. Joe sits up on the side of the bed, rubbing a hand over his Mohawk. White flecks of dandruff drizzle down on his dark jeans. It's not until now he notices the rolling of the ship. His stomach churns with the motion. "Fuck, I feel like I'm going to puke."

"First time out will do that to you." Walt flicks the cigarette with his lips and tongue, flicking ash to the floor. Then he leaves.

"Yeah, well, fuck you." Joe stands up carefully between two waves, and pulls on his oilskin.  

  
\---

  
The first day is a ten hour shift, working through the night in the glare of projector lights. Joe starts out by the cogs, pulling crabs and trash fish and seaweed out of the nets as they emerge from the water. Later on, one of the fishermen ushers him below deck where the still-gaping fish are pushed down  a slide, gutted, sorted in size, put in crates and covered with shovelfuls of crushed ice.

"Fucking mass murder, isn't it?" Joe leans against the wall, smoking a cigarette, sweating underneath the oilskin. He gets no reaction. He takes the last drag of his cigarette and throws it into one of the filled crates. It dies out in the melting ice. He looks up and sees Walt, half turned away, smiling wryly around the soggy stub of a cigarette.

They get off after the nets have been sorted and put back out. The galley's on the third deck. The breakfast is served on metal trays: four slices of soft bread, scrambled eggs with ketchup, greasy hash browns and peaches from a can. No second servings. Afterwards, the other guys huddle together at one table for a game of cards. Joe stumbles down to his cabin.

When he steps in he catches Walt quickly hiding a bottle from view.

"Hey, I don't give a fuck," he fishes out his own bottle of vodka from underneath his blanket, "I've got my own."

Walt brings his plastic bottle back out. Whiskey, cheap stuff. "Don't let the others see that." He indicates at Joe's vodka.

"What, we're not allowed to drink?"

"We're allowed, but. The others might _confiscate_ it anyway. "

"What? Fuck that." Joe tips his head back and swallows steadily, nice hot burn as it hits his stomach.

  
\---

  
A couple of hours later he wakes up in the dark cabin. He gets up and fumbles up steep stairs and brightly lit corridors to the bathroom. He pukes up his breakfast kneeling over the zinc toilet bowl. Billy's Zippo is digging into his hip through his pocket.

The smell of seawater is strong in his nostrils as he heaves over the toilet, and when he tries to rinse his mouth in the sink the tap water is salty.

When he gets back to the cabin he catches Walt watching him in the dark, before he turns over on his other side.

He comments on the water the next afternoon, three cigarettes in, Walt on his fifth.

"You see these pipes?" Walt taps them with his bare foot from his top bunk. "That one's the drain pipe, you can hear it every time someone flushes." He touches another one with his toes. "That one's pumping water to the sinks and toilets. You get drinking water from the kitchen." Walt slides him a look. "Helps with sea sickness."

Joe pretends not to hear.

  
\---

  
He stops puking after the first week. He goes to the kitchen for a one liter bottle of water every day, drinks coffee and booze to slake the rest of his thirst.

He starts going a little crazy from never seeing the sunlight after a while, and begins going on deck before his shift starts, to smoke a little of his weed and watch the sea while he flicks the Zippo open and closed. The seagulls seem to know when their shifts start. When the first ones start circling the boat, Joe goes downstairs to change into his work clothes.

The other guys spend their time off playing poker for five and ten dollar bills. Joe doesn't have that kind of money, and neither does Walt.

"You know, this is the worst cabin on the whole ship." Walt lays down his cards on the crate that Joe stole for a table. Pair of jacks.

"Yeah?"

"No space, no windows, no ventilation, least chance of surviving if the ship goes down."

"No shit? I'm not surprised." Joe's eyes are watering from the thick smoke in the small room. They leave the door open, but there's no draft to carry the smoke out. He shows his hand.

Walt looks over his cards. "Damn." He grimaces and leans back in his seat. He reaches into the deep pockets of his overalls, fishes around for his pack of smokes. His shirt and socks are hanging along with Joe's from the top bunk, damp and wrinkled. Joe looks away, down at the whiskey bottle standing next to Walt's bare foot. The skin of his toes is white and soft from wearing rubber boots all day.

Joe coughs, then straightens up and collects the three cigarettes he just won off of Walt. "You a straight whiskey man? I'll trade you some of my vodka."

  
\---

  
Walt stops shaving every day. The soft, blond stubble makes him look like Billy. 

Joe washes out his boxers and his socks in the sink when they get too dire. He tries to shave his head with a dull disposable razor that someone else has abandoned.

"Fuck!" A thin line of blood and soapy water travels towards his eyebrow. Walt, bare-chested by the other sink, hands him a paper towel.

"This is a fucking bitch to do by yourself."

Walt is scrubbing his armpits with a washcloth. Both of them are pale and thin in the mirror, now, only their hands and faces are red and weather-worn.

"I had a friend who used to do it for me."

Walt rubs his cloth and bar of soap together, he squints at Joe's abused scalp. "Want me to do it?"

"No." Joe rinses out the razor in the sink. The sudsy water is turning pink.

  
\---

  
He gets all the way up to the deck before he realizes he forgot the Zippo in the cabin. Didn't put it back into his pocket after rinsing out his jeans. He runs down the stairs, shouldering past a couple of the other guys who shoot him dirty looks.

Walt has the lighter. He's turning it over in his hand, looking at the engravings, '_made in the States_' etched in small print underneath.

"Give me that." Joe takes it, doesn't wait for Walt to hold it out to him. He's shaking, breathing hard. "What the fuck are you doing, going through my stuff?" 

"It was on your bed."

"What the _fuck_ were you doing going through _my_ stuff?" Four weeks of being cooped up with this guy, and suddenly Joe is thrumming for a fight.

Walt looks up at him, obviously not getting it. "Did a girl give it to you or something?"

It's a short scuffle. Joe takes Walt by surprise, but the skinny fucker is strong. He's not vicious like Billy is, though. He stops fighting almost immediately, lets Joe press him down on the floor. Joe spits in his face then, and finally Walt head butts him, skull connecting with Joe's mouth. It has him spitting blood over the railing when he goes back above deck. 

  
\---

  
Joe stays in the galley after shifts the next couple of days. He sits alone, reads an old newspaper that someone left behind.

One afternoon he wakes up and the silence tells him that he's alone in the cabin. He yawns, gets out of bed, stretches. He casts a glance at the door, and then he hefts himself up over the side of the top bunk. Walt's bag is at the foot of his bed, pressed in along with empty plastic bottles between the thin mattress and the wall. Joe takes it.

It looks like an old school bag. Faded blue and green, ingrained with filth, zipper broken. Ugly motherfucker. Joe pours out its contents on his own bed. An extra shirt, boxers, socks. One empty carton of cigarettes, another carton down to four packs. Not a lot of whiskey left. In one of the sock rolls he finds a wad of money, a hundred and ten dollars in small bills, rolled neatly together. "Son of a bitch." He peels off twenty dollars and pockets them.

Everything's covered in crumbled tobacco and smells like week-old smoke. In the front pocket he finds a book with the back broken quarter ways in. It's stuffed full of postcards, huddled close to the spine. Halifax, Fredrickton, Grand Falls, Québec, Winnipeg. A couple from the west coast. Joe pulls them out and flips them over on by one.

'_Dear mom and dad, Im in -_' and _'I‘ve been staing in -_' and '_How are you. Im -_'

All of it in capital letters. None of the postcards are finished, even though they're all stamped and addressed, to a Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald in Nova Scotia. Joe runs his thumb over one of the stamps that's coming loose at the edges where the glue is gone.

He carefully replaces the postcards in the book and puts the whole thing back into the front pocket. After a moment he retrieves the twenty dollars from his pocket and puts it back with the rest of the money before rolling the socks back up. He pushes everything else back into the bag and throws it on the top bunk.

Walt comes in shortly after. Joe's on his bed. He watches Walt's back as he hangs the dripping oilskin. Must be raining hard.

"So you're from the east coast?" He says, and sees Walt's shoulders tense up.

"I've been sailing the west coast for some years, now." Walt's voice is blank, but he turns around and goes straight for his bag.

"Were you a runaway?"

"No." Walt sounds preoccupied. Joe turns his head and he's looking at his midriff, into the gap where his shirt and jeans come apart as he stretches.

"I was." From where he's laying he can't see it, but he's pretty sure that Walt is getting out his money, counting it. "Why don't you finish writing any of your postcards?"

Walt sighs after a moment, sounding relieved. Done counting, Joe guesses.

"I don't know what to write," Walt hesitates, "don't write too well, either."

"Huh. How about.. 'Dear Mom and Dad. Screw You. Sincerely, Walter'?"

Walt looks down at him, a small smile tugging at the edges of his mouth. "At least it's short."

  
\---

  
Joe takes a deep drag of the joint and holds it up for Walt, who takes it with his thumb and forefinger, pinching the hot stub right above Joe’s fingers. Joe exhales, slow and steady.

They‘re on their last twenty-four hours, sailing into harbor. They’re almost out of booze but Joe had enough weed left for a couple of joints.

Two floors up they can hear country music playing in the galley, the others shouting and laughing.

“So what d‘you think about sailing?” Walt asks, voice deep from holding back smoke.

Joe takes the joint and he can see muscles flexing in his arm as he reaches. He’s got muscles, now.  Muscles and a shitload of aches.

"I don’t know. It's another kind of hard and fucked up than I'm used to."

Walt barks out a laugh, voice mostly gone. "What do you mean?"

"I'd been on the street for a while before boarding. I have this friend back in Vancouver, Billy. He fucked me over." Joe drinks from the whiskey bottle dangling from his hand, laughs, "He’s a fucking drama queen, it happens once in a while - should be alright when I get back into town."

"Guy sounds like an asshole."

Joe stills. He takes a deep drag of  the joint, chases it with a swig of whiskey, wipes his mouth against his shoulder  "Yeah, he is. But... but, so am I."

Walter huffs, one hand reaching down. "I don't think so."

"Shut up." Joe pushes the bottle into his hand. He kills the damp butt of the joint, then leans back on his cot and swings his legs up. He looks up at the metal mesh of springs, swallowing.

“I stole it from him. It‘s his.”

“What is?” Walt’s voice is muffled from the top bunk.

“The lighter. The Zippo. It‘s Billy‘s.”

Walt is quiet for a long time and all Joe can see of him are his hairy ankles, the callused skin on his heels. Then he jumps softly to the floor and turns off the light. He kneels by the side of Joe’s bed. Joe hears him, and he can feel him in the darkness above. A hand wraps around his shoulder, tugs.

“C‘mere.”

Joe does and he feels Walt’s hot exhale against his face before he’s being kissed.

They make out sluggishly - stoned kisses, wide and wet. Walt's tongue is big in Joe's mouth, it burns with whiskey and dope. Joe presses his head back, bares his throat a little. Walt puts a couple fingers there, against his pulse, and keeps kissing him.

When they finally pull apart, Joe opens his eyes again and he can see a little in the dark. He can see the silhouette of Walt leaning in over him, elbows pointing back and upwards. Long fingers leave the side of the cot to reach for Joe's fly.

Hot, dry press of fingers on his dick through his jeans.

"I'll get you off."

"Fag." Joe says quietly. Walt doesn't answer.

  
\---

  
Stepping on to dry land after five weeks out and Joe's not the only one who's stumbling on the firm ground - blinking convulsively against the sunlight.

The dock is crowded with people, cars, boats sounding their horn as they come into port. They off-load the dripping crates, and everyone stands at attention as the crates get counted and carted away, five weeks of work gone in fifteen minutes. The contractor sets up a picnic table by the side of the boat and pays in cash. After they've received their money the sailors leave, one by one, without ceremony.

Joe starts walking.  The street is puddled with water, oily and slick. Soaked newspaper and crushed Styrofoam cling wetly to the asphalt, ground into it by the trucks passing by. Joe smells rotting fish and the exhaust from diesel engines, so strong he can almost taste it. He finds himself short of breath, overwhelmed by the scents and the noise.

A hundred meters down he spots Walt standing at the side of the street, finishing the bottle from yesterday. He's got an unlit cigarette between his fingers. Joe walks over. "You need a light?"  Walt's eyes are red, he still looks a little stoned.

"Yeah, thanks." Voice scratchy, the effects of too much booze and too many cigarettes.

Joe gets the Zippo, flicks it, holds it out for Walt. He lights one for himself and they smoke together.

Walt adjusts his bag across his shoulder. "I'll be going back on the boat."

"Okay. I'll be getting back to..."

"Okay." Walt spits out the butt, his hands already in his pockets for another.

Joe offers him the Zippo.

Walt takes it, lights up and inhales deeply, throat working. He holds the lighter out to Joe.

"Actually, you can keep that."

Walt nods. "Okay." He smiles a little.

Joe can’t. He gets his plastic bag from between his feet. Nothing put empty bottles. He throws it away first trash bin he sees, and then he goes looking for a ride back into Vancouver.


End file.
